Fifteen thousand dollars, raised a few hundred at a time.

Backstop puts a loan request in front of the open market. The borrower names the sum, the rate and the term. Lenders take a share of it in USDC on Solana, from ten dollars up. When the pool is full the money moves, and when the borrower repays, every lender receives their portion on-chain, to the cent.

Browse open requests How a loan works here

Asked for, 13 requests

$395,000

Pledged so far

$199,440

Lenders

1,416

Median rate

13.75%

Consider a chandlery on the Maine coast.

Halden Marine Supply has sold rope, cleats and outboard parts on the same harbour for eleven years. Every spring it has to buy the season’s stock before the season pays for it, and every spring the bank finds a fresh reason to hesitate.

So it asks the market instead: fifteen thousand dollars at fifteen percent over twelve months, with the inventory pledged and a year of statements attached for anyone who cares to read them.

Within a week, sixty-three people it has never met have lent it eleven thousand dollars. One of them put in twenty. Another put in two thousand.

Halden Marine Supply

Rockland, Maine · Retail · since 2014

Asking

15,000

Rate

15.00%

Term

12 mo

$0of 15,000 USDC

Lenders

0 lenders · 6 days left$1,353.87 / month

A loan here moves in three parts, and every one of them happens in the open.

No committee decides who deserves credit. The borrower makes the case, the lenders weigh it, and a program on Solana keeps the books.

The request

A borrower writes the request the way they would explain it across a table: how much, at what rate, for how long and why. Identity, income and trading history are checked before it is published, and every request carries a grade so lenders can judge the weather ahead.

The pool

Lenders choose the requests they believe in and pledge a share. Each pledge waits in an escrow account that answers to no one, including us. If the pool is not full by its deadline, every pledge goes home to the wallet it came from.

The return

The borrower repays monthly into the same escrow. Each payment is divided by the size of every lender’s share and sent on the moment it lands, principal and interest together.

Who gets paid, and when.

The rate on a request is the rate its lenders receive. Nothing is taken out of it along the way. Backstop is paid once, by the borrower, on the day a loan begins, and most of that payment is set aside to protect the people who funded it.

Run the numbers on any loan

The day the pool fills$15,000.00

Borrower receives $14,700.00

Reserve $187.50

Protocol $112.50

Over the next twelve months$16,246.50

Principal to lenders $15,000.00

Interest to lenders $1,246.50

Taken by Backstop $0.00

Halden Marine Supply’s request: 15,000 USDC at 15% APR, repaid in twelve monthly payments of $1,353.87.

The name is a promise we mean to keep.

A backstop is the wall behind the field of play, the thing that stops whatever everyone else let through. Ours is a reserve. One and a quarter percent of every loan is paid into it on the day the loan begins, and it is held on-chain where anyone can count it.

When a borrower misses a payment, the reserve pays lenders the principal they were due that month, in the order they are owed and for as long as its balance allows, and then pursues the borrower for it. It is not insurance and it is not a guarantee. It is a cushion built from every loan, in plain sight.

Paid in per loan

1.25%

Target size

of principal outstanding

Balance

Public

readable on-chain

Repayments flowing · 1.25% of each loan set aside

Open this week.

All thirteen requests

Before the first dollar moves, the code will be read by people who did not write it.

Wallet connection is live today, so you can see how the market will know you. Lending and borrowing open when every program below has cleared independent review and the findings are published in full.

Pool escrowHolds every pledge until a request fills or its deadline passes, then releases the funds or returns them.Pending audit

Repayment routerDivides each repayment by share and credits every lender the moment it lands.Pending audit

Backstop ReserveReceives 1.25% of each loan and covers missed principal in order of claim.Pending audit

Borrower registryRecords that identity checks were passed, without putting anyone’s personal details on-chain.Pending audit

Need capital?

Write the request the way you would explain it to a friend who happens to have money. The draft shows you, line by line, what the loan will cost and what you will receive.

Draft a request

Prefer to lend?

Connect a wallet and read every request as a lender would, with your own balance beside each figure. Pledging opens the day the audit report is published.